MY FIRST CDR… AMATEUR DANCE

CDR Melbourne is now a permanent fixture. Almost two months has flown by since the first at Loop, and now the team is looking towards the next on May 1st.

The sessions genuinely unearth emerging talent. It was the first CDR for so many in the room. Amateur Dance was one of the many artists who we were thrilled to have in attendance. His productions have taken our breath away in 2014 and his grooves are being heard around Australia; latest tracks ‘What I Had To Do’ and ‘Keep It Up’ were recently featured on the prominent triple j radio show, The Sound Lab.

How did you hear about CDR?

Through word of mouth; I really wanted to get involved.

Let’s hear about your first interaction with CDR Melbourne

My first CDR was also the first CDR in Melbourne, in late February at Loop. At first I wasn’t sure how such a small space would hold something like the CDR; a conference, but I remember walking in and immediately being really happy with the atmosphere. Before the event I was a little bit nervous at the whole concept, but everybody in attendance was an absolute sweetheart.

How would you characterise your musical journey so far?

I’d say my journey with making music started when I was 15 when I (and just about every other 15 year old boy I guess) convinced my mum to buy me a guitar. My tastes have developed since then and I started trying to create electronic music when I was about 18, so two years ago.

Over the last year it’s been a really fun journey as I’ve started to get my head around the software, techniques, and the music I want to create.

Have you collaborated with, or hope to, any artists via CDR sessions?

I actually bumped into my good friend Rhys at CDR (he produces as Norachi,) who I hadn’t seen in a while. We hope to share a few stems around and work on remixing each other’s tunes, which I’m really looking forward to.

Any other noteworthy memories from the evening?

I remember having a cigarette outside and hearing a massive track being played, hurrying inside and finding it was made by a dude I’d met at a club, a few weeks prior. A really cool sense of community.

Have you a favourite club and/or soundsystem?

Funktion-One at Mercat Basement. That’s a pretty typical response I suppose from a house dude who lives in Melbourne but something about a small room like that, packed with bodies using that system sounds totally sick.

What’s your set up looking like at the moment?

I use a Roland PCR-500 MIDI keyboard through an M-Box 2 interface into my desktop PC, using Ableton and soft synths.

Have you a favourite piece of equipment?

I honestly have no hardware that I can really talk about other than my PC, but that’s cool because I can’t imagine some old analogue synth taking me the places my computer has. I built it myself when I was this nerdy 12 year old kid in rural Victoria and have been upgrading it since then. I think what makes it so special is it’s carried me through 3 very important stage of my adolescent/young adult life; from 3d-modelling and texturing for video games when I was 13, to competitive video game tournaments when I was 16, and now using it to produce dance music.

I feel like making tunes is going to be a thing I stick to for a lot longer though.

What are you working on at the moment?

Right now I’ve got maybe a release and a half sitting around for now that I’m not 100% sure what I’ll do with. Just trying to get a good hold on a style that’s specific to me at this point, and share the tracks that I really like.

Finally, have you any advice or words of warning for producers/musicians developing musical works in progress to play at CDR?

Don’t be afraid, you’ll be surrounded by lovely people who just want to hear what’s being made by amateur producers in the city that surrounds them; if you’re one of those people who make music that’s probably completely sick but are too shy to share it with people, use CDR as a platform to break through that. It’ll be a bit nerve-wracking but it’s really, really incredible to see a room full of people dance to the music you’ve been dancing to alone in your room for months.